


Barbecue VS Thai Every Night at Flat 7B

by SilverMyfanwy



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: A&E, Accidents, Alternate Universe, Chocolate, Cleaning, Deaf Character, Dentistry, Dog training, Escaped Pet, Essays, Extermination, Gen, House Cleaning, House Crashing, Injury, Jack gets scammed, Loose Dog, Minor Injuries, Moving Out, New Jobs, Ordering Takeaway, Platonic Relationships, Platonic living together, Silly boy, Teaching, Thai Food, Tooth gets a puppy, emergency chocolate, moving in, puppy, scam, takeaway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-06 09:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15883605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverMyfanwy/pseuds/SilverMyfanwy
Summary: It's surprising how much drama there can be when you're in a platonic living-together situation, but that's probably down to Jack Frost being gullible, Tooth bringing home a puppy without warning Bunny first, Sandy being useless at dog training and Bunny, of all people, becoming a teacher.





	1. “Presenting a Prime Example of Most Nights in the Platonic Living Quarters of our Two Subjects of Observation,”

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I coughed up last summer.   
> It's a bit odd, but I like it.  
> Enjoy!

****

 “What d’you want to watch?” Bunny asked Tooth as he flicked through the options on the TV.

“Anything that’s rubbish and I want to be able to half watch it while chatting.” Tooth said. “Let’s get barbecue.”

“I want Thai!” Bunny complained.

“You picked last time!” Tooth argued.

Bunny huffed. “Fine.”

“The usual?”

“Yep. Who’s paying?”

“The jar.”

“Good.”

The jar, which contained money they were supposed to use for fixing broken things like light bulbs, only ever really paid for takeaway meals.

Tooth made the order and flopped down on the sofa beside Bunny. “What are we watching?”

“This.” Bunny pointed at the TV with the remote.

Tooth squinted at the screen. “How is that pronounced?”

Bunny shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”

“I think it’s Spanish.” Tooth decided. “Who do we know that speaks Spanish?”

“You speak Spanish.” Bunny prompted dryly.

“Well, I can’t pronounce that.” Tooth tucked her knees up to her chest and they spent twenty minutes arguing over the pronunciation of the film title, but before they could agree on anything, the food arrived.

Bunny could hear Tooth arguing with the delivery boy from where he sat on the comfortable sofa. She came back in a huff and handed him his container of pork.

“Why were you arguing with him?”

“They’ve stopped providing cutlery.” she handed Bunny a fork.

“Why?”

“He didn’t know.”

“So you yelled at him.”

“Yes.”

Bunny gave her an amused look.

“What?”

“Nothing. Are we watching this film or not?”

“We’re watching it.” Tooth sighed and began to eat her food.

The film was awful.

“Have you heard about what Jack did yesterday?” Bunny asked.

“No.” Tooth looked up curiously. “What did he do?”

“Thought it would be a good idea to tie a snowboard to the back of a bike and ‘surf’ along the road.”

“How long did he manage before he fell off?”

“Five minutes. He sprained his wrist and scraped all the skin off the side of his leg. Was in hospital for seven hours.”

“I would say that would teach him not to do stupid stuff but we all know it won’t.”

“Mmhmm.” Bunny turned his attention to his food.

“How’s school going?” Tooth asked.

“Better than normal. I have a new class.”

“That’s good.”

“This film is awful.” Bunny said through a mouthful of meat. Tooth nodded and they watched on as the main character bemoaned his ‘disastrous life’.

“Woe is me, woe is me, woe is me!” Tooth mocked. Bunny laughed.

The film continued, getting worse and worse as it went on.

“This really is awful.” Bunny repeated. “Shall we find something else?”

Tooth nodded, too focused on the on-screen terribilities to make eye contact with him.

The next morning, at the truly unhuman hour of 9 AM, someone started knocking on the door.

“You get it!” Bunny and Tooth shouted at the same time from their own rooms.

“I ordered dinner last night!” Tooth shouted.

“Fine but it’s your turn next time!” Bunny shouted back. He rolled out of bed with a thump and padded angrily to the front door.

“Who is it?” he glared at Jack Frost. “What do you think you’re doing, ya-”

“Leave the insults for later!” Jack said dramatically and pushed past Bunny into the living room. Jack fell onto the sofa and lay there looking theatrical.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Bunny asked crossly. “It’s nine am, this is _too early_.”

Tooth came out of her room. Her green, blue and yellow hair was a lopsided mess.

“Jack?” she asked blearily.

“I have had the most awful night!” Jack bemoaned.

“It can’t have been that bad.” Bunny said.

Jack glared at Bunny. “You weren’t there. You don’t know how bad it really was.”

“Can it wait until alter?” Tooth yawned. “It’s not even 10 yet.”

“No.” Jack said firmly. “So I was down at The Dragon having a pint with Hiccup-”

“How many pints?” Bunny groaned.

“Just one, thank you very much. Anyway, I’d had a pint and started walking home. On my way home, I heard a dog barking.”

“Not uncommon.” Bunny said.

Jack glared at him. “Shut up and let me tell the story! So, because I heard the dog barking, I didn’t notice a pool of oil on the ground. I stepped in the oil and slipped over and got covered in oil.”

Bunny and Tooth winced. Jack carried on.

“Then I walked home, dripped oil all over the floor, managed to wash the oil off, with  _my sprained wrist_ , everywhere apart from my hair.”

Bunny had no sympathy. “And why is having oil in your hair a problem?”

“Because I had absolutely no idea how to get it out!” Jack practically screeched. “I looked awful!”

Tooth peered at Jack’s hair. “I can still see some in the back.”

Jack groaned. “I’ll get it out later. Well anyway, I was panicking so I rang Hiccup for some stupid reason, probably because he was top of my most recent contacts list, and asked him how to get oil out of my hair. At first, he thought I was drunk, then when he realised I wasn’t, he said I needed cornflour and vegetable oil. I had no idea what cornflour and vegetable oil are, so obviously didn’t have any of it in my house, so Hiccup brought me some. He then told me to wash my hair with it.”

“How on earth do you do that?” Tooth asked.

“Well, just as he was going to show me, he slipped on the oil that had dripped off me earlier and then his ankle started swelling up.”

“His human ankle or his prosthetic?” Tooth asked.

“His human ankle. Also, he got dizzy and a huge lump on his head, so I called an ambulance. The ambulance arrived and took Hiccup off. Then I realised he’d left the cornflour and vegetable oil but in the rush the cornflour had been knocked over and most of it had come out of the jar.

“I scooped up as much as I could and put it back in the jar. I went upstairs, filled the sink up with water, poured the cornflour all over my head and put my head in the water. The cornflour all fell off my head and into the water and I was so surprised I got a mouthful of it.”

Bunny and Tooth groaned.

“After I nearly choked-”

Bunny and Tooth rolled their eyes,

“I managed to wash the oil out, but when I pulled the plug out of the sink the cornflour blocked it all up.”

“How do you manage this stuff, Jack?” Tooth asked exasperatedly.

Jack shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t ask.”

“So what did you do about the blocked sink?” Bunny asked.

“Left it.” Jack said simply.

“You didn’t do anything?” Tooth asked, horrified.

Jack shook his head. “Nope. I didn’t want to have to deal with another thing so I went to bed and when I woke up I came here.”

“Have you called a plumber?” Bunny asked.

Jack nodded. “I know someone who knows someone so my sink should currently be being fixed.”

“Did this plumber have a key?” Tooth said.

Jack’s eyes widened. “No.”

“Out.” Tooth pointed at the door. “For your own sake, out and go and sort out a key and the sink and a plumber and clear up any oil that’s left on the floor before someone else gets hurt!”

But she hardly needed to have said it because Jack was already out the door with a hasty ‘bye’ thrown over his shoulder as he ran down the corridor.

Tooth was the only one who managed to get back to sleep after the escapade with Jack. Bunny’s nerves were too rattled after being woken at the ‘unholy hour of stupid o’ clock’. Instead of sleeping, he set to work on an essay he had to write.

Bunny’s way of writing an essay was simple: drink a cup of the strongest coffee available, turn up loud-and-shouty rock music as high as the volume on his headphones would go, sit at his laptop and hope for the best.

This would work until the music reached through the headphones and woke Tooth up. She was less than amicable after this second rude awakening. 

“BUNNY!” she shouted as she threw his bedroom door open. “TURN THAT MONSTROSITY OFF!”

“It’s not that loud!” Bunny protested.

“It woke me up!”

“How? I’ve got headphones on!”

Tooth pointed to the end of the headphone cable, where it was lying on the floor, and then to the empty headphone socket in Bunny’s laptop. “Oh.”

“Humph.” Tooth frowned, folded her arms and stormed out of Bunny’s room, slamming the door behind her. Bunny winced. He quickly plugged his headphones back into his laptop and got back to work on his essay. He didn’t see Tooth until later that day sometime in the middle of the afternoon when he went looking for food.

Bunny walked into the kitchen expecting everything to be as normal.

It was not.

For a start, there was newspaper all over the floor, bags of dog food on the counter and the sound of scrabbling claws on smooth flooring coming from the living room.

“Tooth?” Bunny called. “What’s going- ahh!”

A puppy came bounding across the floor towards Bunny and began sniffing his legs.

“Tooth!” Bunny screamed. “There’s a puppy!”

Tooth walked into the kitchen and picked the puppy up. It was small and yellow and had big floppy ears. Bunny thought it might have been a golden retriever, but then again it might have been any other type of dog on the planet when you considered his knowledge of dogs.

“It’s my puppy.” Tooth said, stroking the dog. “She’s called Avocado.”

Bunny gaped at her. “You called a dog Avocado?”

“Does it really matter?”

“And why have you got a puppy anyway? When did you get it?”

“I got her earlier. My friend from college whose dog had a litter of puppies recently said that I could have one of the puppies.”

“And you didn’t tell me about this because?”

“If I’d told you, you would have said no, but if I just brought her home with me you’d end up liking her.”

Bunny gazed at the puppy, who was now chewing on Tooth’s hair. “Are you sure about that?”

Tooth extracted her hair from Avocado’s mouth. “Positive.”

Bunny made a hasty retreat back into his room and pushed a chest of drawers up against the door so that Avocado wouldn’t be able to get in. He completed his essay and then played video games for the rest of the day.

When he decided he wanted dinner, he walked up the door and pressed his ear against it. “TOOTH!”

“WHAT?”

“WILL YOU ORDER ME DINNER?”

“WHY?”

“MAYBE BECAUSE YOU OWE ME AN APOLOGY FOR BRINGING HOME A PUPPY WITHOUT TELLING ME FIRST?”

“NO!”

“WHY NOT?”

“BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO! ORDER YOUR DINNER YOURSELF!”

Bunny groaned loudly and began the difficult task of moving his chest of drawers away from the door and back into its proper place. By the time he was done, he was pretty sure that three toes were broken and his wrist was sprained, as it had gone a funny green colour, and his toes had gone black and lumpy and very, very painful.

He hobbled out into the rest of the flat. “Tooth, you need to check me over!”

“Have you got a cavity?” the puppy was now sleeping on a blanket in the living room.

“I think I’ve hurt my wrist and my toes.”

“I can’t help you with them.” Tooth looked up from her laptop and at Bunny. “You should probably go to A&E, though.”

“How can I get to A&E like this?” Bunny moaned.

“I’ll take you.” Avocado whimpered in her sleep and Tooth frowned. “I can’t leave her on her own. She’ll have to come with us.”

And that is how Bunny ended up being driven to A&E at ten at night with an overexcited puppy on his lap.


	2. “Presenting a Prime Example of How I End Up Doing What You Should Be Doing and You End Up Doing What I Should Be Doing.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tooth tries to train Avocado, Bunny tries to clean the flat, somehow Sandy gets roped into it and everything goes downhill.  
> Oh, and Jack gets scammed.

“Sandy’s coming round later.” Tooth told Bunny as they lay on the sofa watching TV.

Bunny had crutches for his broken toes now, but as his wrist was strapped up thanks to the sprain, they were utterly useless and had been lying on the floor gathering dust since he had come home from the hospital two days ago.

“Why?”

“To help me train Avocado.”

Bunny furrowed his eyebrows. “Can Sandy train dogs?”

“Dunno.”

Bunny rolled his eyes. “Can you train her in just the living room or something please? I need to clean.”

“You need to clean?” Tooth turned to look at Bunny in astonishment.

Bunny nodded mournfully. “Sophie’s coming round.” he explained. “And if the flat isn’t spotless, she’ll tell mam.”

“Ooh.”

“And then mam’ll come round, deep clean everything and throw out most of the stuff here.”

Tooth bit her lip. “That would not be good.”

Bunny got up and half shuffled, half hopped over to the window. He ran a finger along the sill and it came back covered in thick, black dust and cobwebs. “Yuk.”

He glanced up and saw a familiar bright orange convertible pull up outside the block of flats he and Tooth rented their apartment from. “Sandy’s here.”

“Already?” Tooth looked up at Bunny incredulously. “Are you sure?”

“Well, who else around here drives a bright orange convertible?”

Tooth sighed and walked over to the intercom system which started to crackle. “You can come up, Sandy.” she pressed a finger to the button on the intercom display that opened the doors downstairs for Sandy.

“Have you got everything ready?” Bunny asked.

Tooth’s eyes widened. “No.”

She scrambled to move Avocado out of the way as she began pushing piles of textbooks around to block the puppy’s way out of the living room. One of the piles used to block the way was made up of puppy training books that still hadn’t been taken out of their plastic wrappers or Amazon delivery boxes.

Sandy knocked on the door and Tooth rushed to open it, knocking over one of the piles of books, which meant that Avocado was able to rush out of the living room, into the hall, through Sandy’s legs and into the lobby area for their floor.

Bunny stood in the doorway watching Tooth and Sandy chase the puppy around, negotiating an old lady with her shopping bags and a woman with a buggy. Sandy managed to catch her by making a spectacular dive to the floor and grabbing her round the stomach.

"Was that supposed to happen?" Sandy signed to Tooth once he had handed the puppy over.

"No."

They herded Avocado back into the flat with many apologies to the people in the lobby trying to get into their own flats. Tooth closed and locked the door firmly and pointed a finger at Avocado. “You, missy, are in big trouble.”

Avocado ignored her and began playing with her soft toys.

Tooth gave a low growl in her throat and turned to Sandy. "Sorry about that."

Sandy grinned. "It’s fine."

Tooth then turned to Bunny. “Why didn’t you help?” she demanded.

Bunny motioned wordlessly to his foot, whilst smiling.

“Urrgh.” Tooth stormed into the kitchen and started banging pots around nosily as she mad e coffee.

Sandy turned his hearing aid on. He didn’t like having it on in public as the noise overwhelmed him.

“Are you helping train Avocado?” Sandy asked in a mixture of signs and words.

Bunny shook his head. “I have to clean the flat.” he said mournfully.

Sandy took a step back. “Are you feeling alright?”

Bunny laughed. “My sister’s coming round and if the flat isn’t clean she’ll tell my mam.”

Sandy winced. “You should probably start then.” he took in the floor covered in wrappers and half-eaten dog chews, the inch-thick dust on most surfaces, the crumbs all over the sofa and the ketchup stains on the wall.

For some reason, Avocado hadn’t eaten or licked any of these things up. She had examined them, sniffed them, turned her nose up at them and then walked off to eat her organic, gluten-free, additive and colouring free, very expensive bowlful of puppy biscuits.

Bunny also looked around and seemed to see the flat in a new light.

His face fell to the bottom of the Marina Trench as he walked into the kitchen. He walked back out wearing huge pink washing-up gloves, a flowery apron, a pair of swimming goggles and rubber boots. He held a bottle of bleach, a scrubbing brush, a pack of dish cloths and an antiseptic spray.

Sandy laughed for a long time when he saw Bunny.

Bunny glared at him. “It’s not funny.”

Bunny began trying to clean one of the windowsills. After spraying about half the antiseptic on it, he attempted to wipe the dust up. He got the dust, just not the coffee stain that the dust had been hiding.

He sighed and applied bleach to the surface (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME). It fizzed and crackled and dissolved about half the windowsill, but got rid of the coffee stain. Bunny smiled proudly at his work.

At this point, Tooth came in having calmed down with a steaming mug of the most powerful coffee in the cupboard that had roasted every last taste bud off her tongue. She held a handful of dog treats and set to work with Sandy and Avocado.

“Sit.” Tooth commanded.

Avocado jumped onto Sandy’s lap and began licking his face.

“Sit.” Tooth commanded again.

Avocado turned to look at Tooth, wagging her tail.

Tooth pointed at the floor. “Down.”

Avocado jumped to the floor and began to nuzzle Tooth’s hand for a treat.

“Good girl.” Tooth gave the puppy a treat.

Tooth and Sandy began to try and get her to sit.

They failed miserably.

In the space of an hour, Avocado ate half a bag of treats, knocked over a mug, stole a cushion from the sofa, smashed a plate and got into the bathroom where she ate a roll of toilet paper after dragging it all round the house.

By this point, Tooth and Sandy had both collapsed to the floor and were leaning against each other for support. They had given up. Avocado had won and she knew this as she paraded around the flat with her tail in the air wagging nineteen to the dozen.

Bunny had destroyed and bleached quite a lot of things in the hour Sandy and Tooth had spent chasing after the trail of wreckage Avocado was leaving behind her and trying to train the puppy. It had been a rather interesting experience, cleaning a filthy flat while wearing a flowery apron and rubber gloves with a sprained wrist and broken toes. He had stumbled over his own feet a few times and crashed into the walls, often leaving new stains behind him.

He had managed to do a certain amount of actual cleaning and the flat did look better for it, though it was still atrocious.

Tooth glanced up from her failure-induced stupor at Bunny’s efforts. She looked at it for a while before she realised what she was actually seeing and then jumped to her feet. At the same time, Bunny came in and saw Tooth and Sandy looking drained and Avocado chewing happily on one of Tooth’s many hairbrushes whilst lying atop a pile of ripped cushion.

“What have you done?” they shrieked in unison.

“Nothing!” Bunny said at the same time a Tooth miserably groaned out a “failed,”

“You haven’t done 'nothing'!” Tooth protested indignantly, gesturing around the room. “Look at it!”

Bunny took it in and his mouth made a perfect ‘o’ shape.

Tooth put her hands on her hips. “I can’t train dogs, you can’t clean, but you had dogs as a kid so you must be able to train them and I know how to clean without destroying the house but that’s about as far as my knowledge goes, so why don’t we just swap jobs?”

Bunny looked down at his outfit. “But I like wearing this,” he said mournfully. “It was fun.”

“You can still wear it for training Avocado,” Tooth sighed. “Now give me the cloths.”

She held out her hands expectantly.

Bunny gave her the clothes, the sprays, the scrubbing brush and the bleach. Tooth gave him the bag of dog treats. A short while ago it had been full, but Avocado had filched most of them when Tooth wasn’t looking.

The first thing Bunny did was pull his phone out of his pocket and google ‘how do I train a puppy’.

The first thing Tooth did was put all the cleaning products back in the cupboard and get a mop out instead.

As Bunny and Tooth took on their new tasks with a renewed vigor, Sandy fell asleep on the floor, living up to his reputation of being able to sleep anywhere and everywhere. When he woke up, there was slightly less mess in the flat. Tooth, easily distracted, had found a magazine down the back of one of the sofas and was reading through it.

Bunny had decided that the best way to train Avocado successfully would be to feed her the rest of the bag of treats. He assured Sandy that he had successfully taught her how to sit on command, although he couldn’t actually prove it because she was now fast asleep on her alpaca wool bed.

Sandy sighed. “Are you going to do the cleaning then?”

Bunny looked at him as if he was mad. “But Tooth’s doing that now.”

Sandy gave Bunny a look but it was pointless as he turned and went to his room. Sandy sighed and picked up Tooth’s deserted cleaning supplies and began the long task of reading all the instructions on the labels. After he did this, he went to the kitchen to root around for a pair of tongs. Using sticky tape and a roll of string that was previously living in the microwave before Sandy rescued it from a potentially fiery and explosive doom, he stuck the tongs onto a broom handle and with quite a lot of fiddling and swearing, he made himself a litter picker.

He trooped around the flat, picking up wrappers and containers and dumping them in a bin bag. It was surprising how big a difference this actually made. Sandy then considered the practically rainbow coloured array of stains on the walls, ceilings, and now that there were no wrappers to hide them, the stains on the floor. He briefly wondered about texting his mum to see if he could borrow her power washer, but the walls were in such a state that he worried that if he blasted them with that much water, one, they would get damp and mould and two, he would probably blast through the wall and into the flat next door.

While this could get rid of the stains beautifully, it would also create a lot more clearing up to do, not forgetting the walls that would need rebuilding. He also wondered if there would be time to repaint or put wallpaper up, but eventually decided on moving all the pictures in the hall off their nails and onto the stained walls, to cover up the offending marks.

He dealt with the floor by placing blankets to look like rugs and decided there wasn’t anything he could do about the ceiling. Sandy vacuumed and scrubbed and cleaned until he’d had enough, at which point he helped himself to some biscuits from a cupboard and left.

Tooth and Bunny recognised Sandy’s hard work around an hour later, when Tooth finally looked up from her magazine and Bunny went looking for coffee.

-

About a month after Sandy stepped in and cleared Bunny and Tooth’s flat, saving Bunny from death by his mother’s cleaning wrath, there was a knock on the door at about eleven am.

Tooth was up, lying on the sofa in her tooth-patterned bright pink pyjamas and watching some trashy reality TV programe. She rolled off the sofa and walked towards the front door.

“Hurry up! My arms are full of really heavy bags!” Jack Frost shouted from behind the door.

“Jack?” Tooth opened the door and stared at him in shock.

His arms, as he had said, were full of large bags. Two large suitcases were on the floor next to him and he was wearing a rucksack that had pots and pans hanging off it. Next to him sat an enormous Bernese Mountain Dog, its tongue lolling out of its mouth. “Finally! Do you have any idea how heavy these bags are?” Jack walked into the living room and dumped his bags on one of the sofas.

“What are you doing here?” Tooth demanded.

“I’m coming to stay with you.” Jack announced as he brought the rest of the bags and the very large dog in.

“You’re coming to stay with us?” Tooth said blankly. “Unannounced, with no warning or reason given and what’s with the huge dog?”

“My apartment’s being exterminated.” Jack explained. “I was going to stay with Sandy but he’s got flu, so I’m staying with you and Bunny instead. And this is my dog, Hummingbird.”

“You called your huge Bernese Mountain Dog Hummingbird?” Tooth asked incredulously.

“You called your dog Avocado.” Jack shot.

“Hummingbird is just plain ridiculous.” Tooth argued.

At the mention of her name, Avocado had awoken from her sleep in the kitchen and had come to investigate what was going on. When she caught sight of Hummingbird, she bounded up, barking to play. Hummingbird did not want to play and growled at Avocado. Avocado yelped and jumped backwards to hide behind Tooth’s legs while Jack told Hummingbird off.

“Look! Your dog doesn’t even like Avocado! This was not a good idea Jack!” Tooth shouted.

“What’s going on?” Bunny came out of his room and took in the scene before him. “Woah.”

“I’ve come to stay.” Jack told Bunny.

“Okay.” Bunny shrugged.

“OKAY?” Tooth turned on her flatmate, fury blazing in her purple eyes. “IT IS NOT OKAY! He can’t just bring all his stuff and his horrible massive dog-”

“Hummingbird’s lovely!” Jack protested.

“-called _Hummingbird_ in here and expect us to let him stay!”

“I haven’t got a problem with it.” Bunny said calmly.

Tooth’s face went white as a sheet with anger, contrasting horribly with her hair and clothes. “Well,” she said in a furious voice, “if you haven’t got a problem with it, then why doesn’t Jack just stay here and you can pay all the rent _because I’m leaving._ ”

“Why?” Jack and Bunny both demanded.

Tooth raised her eyebrows so high they almost disappeared into her hairline. “DO YOU NOT- agh!” she dug her fingers into her hair, released her hair, picked up Avocado and stormed into her room. The door slammed shut, making the whole flat shake.

“What was that about?” Jack asked Bunny.

Bunny shrugged and saw how much stuff Jack had brought with him. “I thought you could leave all your stuff if the exterminator came.”

Jack frowned. “That’s not what my exterminator said. He said I had to pack up everything.”

“Who is your exterminator?”

Jack fished a business card out of his pocket while Hummingbird climbed onto one of the sofas. Jack held the card out to Bunny, who took it.

“I can’t pronounce this.” Bunny said flatly. He frowned and pulled out his phone. “Hang on a moment.”

“Hey North,” Bunny held his phone to his ear. “You still got that colleague who used to be an exterminator?”

Bunny went quiet and Jack could hear North shouting happily in a mix of accented English and garbled Russian.

“Do you have to clear everything out of your living space if it’s being exterminated? No? Okay…right…why? Oh, it’s just for a friend. Thanks North. Bye.” Bunny hung up and looked firmly at Jack. “How much did you pay?”

“Uh, 500 bucks?” Jack scratched his head thoughtfully.

“And what were you getting rid of?”

“Rats, mice, spiders, the remains of a wasp nest and bed bugs. That’s what the guy said he found, anyway.” Jack listed, counting on his fingers.

“So you don’t actually know if you have any of those things in your house or not.” Bunny worked out.

Jack nodded. “But the guy must know what he’s talking about if he’s an exterminator.”

“What did you call him in about in the first place?”

“I didn’t call him in, he just knocked on the door offering to come and have a look around.” Jack explained coolly.

“So you let him in,” Bunny said exasperatedly.

Jack nodded.

“Did it ever occur to you that he might have been scamming you?”

“He wasn't scamming me.” Jack assured.

“How do you know?”

“He just didn’t seem like a scammer.”

Bunny sighed. “The whole point of being a professional scammer is not to seem like a scammer.”

“And how would you know?” Jack asked smugly, a wicked grin spreading across his face.

“Because all my mates at school were scammers!” Bunny groaned. “And I’m pretty sure that you’ve been scammed.”

“You have to be gullible to get scammed.” Jack folded his arms. “And I’m not gullible.”

“I can make your hand turn over without touching you.” Bunny began. “Hold your hand out.”

Jack held his hand out.

“No, other way up.”

Jack turned his hand over.

“See?” Bunny pulled himself up to his full height of six feet one inch. “You are gullible, you have been scammed, you need to go back to your house _right now_ and call the police.”

Jack did not gasp, or run for the door, or panic. He smiled. Then he chuckled. And then he freely laughed, rolling on the floor and clutching his sides.

Bunny groaned and walked into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich.

~

An hour later, Tooth and Avocado emerged. Tooth had got dressed now; she had put on a long purple skirt decorated in gold embroidery, a dark blue and gold long sleeved top and her fingers were laden down with rings of every colour, shape and size. Her hair was in a long twist down her back and looked like a multi-coloured rope, although to say that to her face would be an extremely stupid thing to do.

Tooth took one look at Hummingbird lying on the sofa, getting fur and slobber all over the recently cleaned (she made a mental note to thank Sandy again for doing all the cleaning as it had given her a brilliant reason to kick Jack out) sofa and screamed in a way that Bunny would later describe to Hiccup and his mates down at the pub as ‘bloody blue murder’.

“JACK MICHIGAN FROST GET YOUR FILTHY DOG OFF MY CLEAN SOFA AND OUT OF MY CLEAN FLAT AT ONCE!”

“You cleaned your flat?” Jack gaped at Tooth. “Really?”

“Well, not me as such, but Sandy did most of it. Sandy did all of it actually. Now get out!”

“Jack’s been scammed.” Bunny informed Tooth.

“No I haven’t!” Jack protested, turning his phone off so he could pay proper attention to the argument that would no doubt ensue.

“How’ve you been scammed?” Tooth demanded, and Bunny, with protests from Jack, explained the long and complicated story.

“Where’ve you moved all your stuff to, Jack?” Tooth had calmed down slightly now, although she still couldn’t bear to look at Hummingbird.

“The exterminator guy also said that he ran a storage business and he said that if I just took what I’d need that he’d sort all the rest out for me.”

“Jack, you’ve been scammed.” Tooth said firmly. “You need to go back to your house now, partly because I’m kicking you out and partly so you can stop this exterminator from scamming you even more.”

“I’m not being scammed!” Jack jumped up and down to emphasise his point.

“Okay.” Bunny put his hands in the air to stop another argument. “Jack’s not being scammed-”

“He is!”

“Shut up Tooth. But I think it’s worth double checking just to be on the safe side, so if you want me to, Jack, I can go and make sure that you aren’t being scammed. Just to be sure.” Bunny was using his ‘calm down the highly agitated teachers and sooth the very upset pupil’ voice he had spent a lot of time practicing. It worked.

“Alright,” Jack sighed and handed his keys over.

“Thank you.” Bunny pocketed the keys and put a pair of shoes on. “I’ll be back in an hour at the most.”

Tooth and Jack watched as Bunny walked out of the front door. They listened to him walk over to the lift and with their ears pressed against the door, heard the lift doors close behind him. Hummingbird got off the sofa and padded up to Tooth. She placed her head on Tooth’s hand and gave the dentist a big slobbery lick. Tooth looked down in disgust and was met by such big brown eyes that her disgust faded, though only slightly, and she gave the dog a stroke.

“I guess you can stay until Bunny gets back.” Tooth sniffed with slightly less disdain than Jack had expected.

So Hummingbird lay on the floor and after a while Avocado ventured out to curl up on Tooth’s lap while Tooth and Jack sat on different sofas watching their only common ground on TV: trashy reality TV that they could take the mick out of.

One hour later, true to his word, Bunny came back.

“I told you so,” Jack said smugly before Bunny had even had time to say anything.

“What do you mean?” Bunny asked incredulously.

Jack didn’t look up from the TV when he spoke. “Told you I hadn’t been scammed.”

“Well you have!” Bunny shouted. “He’s selling all your stuff on the internet or through contacts and he’s moved into your house! There isn’t a piece of exterminating equipment in sight!”

Jack swore long and hard and taught even Bunny some new curses.

“Shall we call the police?” Tooth suggested.

“Yes!” Jack said slightly hysterically. “Of course we’re calling the police!”

Tooth had hardly pulled her phone out of her pocket before Jack was already dialing the number into his phone and asking for the police.

“Let’s just leave him to it.” Bunny suggested to Tooth. She nodded and they went into the kitchen so that they could watch the other TV in peace.

They made themselves comfortable on the counter, pulled the cola out of the fridge for Bunny and the healthy sugar-free lemon flavoured water for Tooth, treated themselves to the opening of the huge bar of chocolate in the cupboard and began channel skipping.

After about an hour they got out the Star Wars DVDs and were halfway through the first episode when they thought it might be a good idea to see how Jack was getting on. Tooth peered around the kitchen door and winced.

“How is he?”

“Not good.”

Bunny joined Tooth in peering around the door. Jack was lying flat on his back on a sofa looking rather ill. They retreated back behind the door and had a hasty whispered discussion.

“I think we should feed him.” Tooth suggested.

“Or give him a hug.”

They thought about that and then shook their heads in unison.

“Let’s feed him.”

“Feed him what?”

“Chocolate?” Bunny said tentatively. “It’ll make him feel better.”

Tooth thought about this and then nodded firmly. “Chocolate.”

~

“Jack,” Bunny stuck his head around the door, “you want some chocolate?”

“No,” Jack moaned, his arms lying limply off the edge of the sofa.

Bunny and Tooth exchanged a worried look.

“What if it was Cadbury’s?” Tooth lured.

Jack ate the rest of the bar.


	3. “The Comings, the Goings, the Changing and Apologies for Not Leaving the Flat in an Even Bigger Mess For You to Have to Clean Up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter.

“I got the job!” Bunny threw his phone down on the sofa and began to dance around the room. “I got the job I got the job I got the job!”

Tooth and Avocado joined him in his celebrations; Tooth waving her arms around happily and Avocado, who was now a lot bigger, barking for no particular reason at all other than the people were yelling and cheering, so why shouldn’t she join in too?

Tooth froze. “Hang on. Isn’t that the school that’s really far away?”

Bunny also froze. “Yes.”

“What are you going to do about commuting?”

Bunny sank onto the sofa. “I think I’ll have to move.”

“You will, won’t you?”

Bunny nodded.

“We can move out at the same time now!” Tooth said cheerily.

Bunny looked up in shock. “You’re moving out?”

Tooth nodded happily. “I’m setting up my own dental practice and there’s a flat above it.”

“Where d’you get the money to do that from?”

“I got a grant from the bank.”

“You went to the _bank_?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell you.”

“Well you’ve told me now.” Bunny sighed.

“When do you start your new job?”

“Three months.” Bunny ran a hand through his hair.

Tooth pulled a face. “That’s not long to find a new flat, is it?”

Bunny shook his head. “Where’s my phone gone?”

“There.”

Bunny opened his phone and began typing something into the search bar. “Flats… for… sale… or… rent… near… Hillbrook Juniors.”

Tooth peered over his shoulder. “Nothing’s come up.”

Bunny groaned and put his head in his hands, accidentely smacking his phone into his face. “Ow.”

Tooth laughed, but stopped when she saw the look Bunny was giving her. “Sorry. Uh, do we know anyone who lives near there?”

“The Leprechaun.”

The Leprechaun was an old acquaintance of Bunny and Tooth’s who liked to cause chaos and spread kindly mischief wherever he went. He was called the Leprechaun because he was Irish and had a habit of giving large amounts of money to people having bad days.

“No.” Bunny said firmly. “No no no no no. I am not ever ever ever living with the leprechaun. I would wake up every morning to find my laptop gone, or my room clingfilmed, or a hundred people passed out in the living room.” “True.” Tooth opened her own phone and began typing something in. “Your new school isn’t that far from my surgery actually. You could stay with me until you have enough money to buy or rent your own place.”

“I’m a teacher, Tooth.” Bunny said dryly. “That’s never going to happen.”

“Oh it will.” Tooth said cheerily. “You’ll just have to go to the bank and get a mortgage.”

“Charming.” Bunny took a deep breath. “How big is this apartment of yours?”

~

Later that day, Bunny rang his mum to let her know about his new job. He put the phone on speaker and placed it on the table in front of him. Whilst it rang, Tooth shut the kitchen door so that Avocado, who was sleeping in there, wouldn’t be woken by the noise of Bunny’s mum.

“Hello? Who is it?”

“Hello mum.”

“Benjamin! Why are you ringing me? What has happened?” her voice was shrill and high pitched, and rather unimpressed about the whole thing.

“I got a new job.” Bunny said, grinning. “I’ll be teaching a Year 8 class at Hillbrook Junior School.”

“How much are they paying you?” his mum sniffed. “You’d better be able to move into your own house away from that horrid girl Tooth,” she muttered something along the lines of ‘ridiculous name for a ridiculous girl’.

Tooth collapsed to the floor in silent hysterics.

“Mother!” Bunny was horrified. “And actually, because there aren’t any places to rent or buy at the moment near my new school, I’m going to have to stay living with Tooth, just in a different flat.”

“Hmph.” Bunny could just imagine the look on his mum’s face. “How can you stand to live with her, honestly-”

“Mother! She’s my friend!”

“She doesn’t sound like a very nice friend, to me. What is your new school again?”

After the phone call had ended, Tooth was exhausted from laughing so much. Then she and Bunny made half a second’s worth of eye contact and then both burst out into hysterics.

~

The quest of getting all their stuff packed up in time for the end of the month when they were moving out began. Tooth went on a hunt of the internet for cardboard boxes and Bunny tried to find a removals company that hadn’t scammed anyone in the past year.

When they did finally track one down and had ordered enough boxes in, they remembered that he flat above Tooth’s new surgery wasn’t ready to live in yet, so all of that had to be sorted out. Then, on the day before they moved, there came the problem of what they should leave out overnight to pack early the next morning.

“Coffee machine.”

“Sofa.”

“TV.”

“Avocado’s bed.”

“Microwave.”

Tooth winced. “I’ve already packed the microwave.”

“Where did you pack it?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Let’s just eat takeaway then.”

“Thai.”

“Barbecue.”

“We can’t argue over what food we’re going to eat if we aren’t sitting on the sofa.”

So they flopped onto the sofas and Avocado jumped up to join them.

“Let’s just get both.” Bunny suggested. “We’ve got to use up the rest of the jar and it’s out last night.”

Tooth beamed and got her phone out to make the order.

They spent their last night at Flat 7B arguing over whether barbecue was better than Thai or whether Thai was better than barbecue, taking the mick out of whatever they were watching on TV (they weren’t actually sure) and feeding Avocado treats as they had forgotten to leave her normal food out and Bunny had finally warmed up to her. Later on, Jack, who had managed to un-scam himself and sort everything out thanks to the police, came round to help them make a mess that their landlord would have to clean up.

The End.

 


End file.
